


Seika's Cosmo

by Palabragris



Series: Saint Seiya: Female Saints Legends [1]
Category: Knights of the Zodiac - Fandom, Saint Seiya
Genre: Alternative Universe Deconstruction, Blood, Drama, English, Female Protagonist, Gen, Multi, Saint Seiya - Freeform, action adventure, shonen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26878444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palabragris/pseuds/Palabragris
Summary: During her last attempt to awake her Cosmo, with her own life in the line at the hands of her Master Ophiuchus Shaina, Seika witnesses a man battling a shadow while wearing the Cloth of Pegasus. She recognizes in him her long-dead brother, Seiya, who warns her of the dangers ahead and of the treason of Goddess Athena against them. Unknowingly, this -and that exceptionally rare Cosmo she awoke- places her as a central piece in the Civil War between the Saints of the Sanctuary and the traitors who proclaim a Japanese girl called Kido Saori as the real Goddess. All while Seika tries to prove herself worthy of a Cloth that's not rightfully hers.The betrayal of loved ones, the fight against her own self-doubting, the rivalry between friends and foes, and the political intrigues surrounding the mysteries of her own power. Seika must fight and learn. And above all else, she must try to understand what her brother tried to warn her about when her Cosmo heard him plead: «Trust Pegasus!»
Series: Saint Seiya: Female Saints Legends [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961557
Kudos: 3





	Seika's Cosmo

**1**

**SEIKA  
** **HER FIRST COSMO**

****

Six long years of arduous training came to an end the moment Seika’s Master jumped high into the nightly sky to become one with the shining stars. Just as her Master had promised —and Ophiuchus Shaina had never forgone a promise— this attack would be the one to decide everything.

“Before I see you die to Cassios,” Master Shaina had told her moments earlier, “I’d rather kill you with my own hands. Now prepare yourself, Seika!”

Six long years had passed since Seika arrived to the Sanctuary striving to become a Female Saint, six years in which she had gained strength, speed and the guts to face her enemies, but she had tried and failed to awaken the most essential aspect expected from a Saint: she still was incapable of awakening her inner Cosmo.

Even if her fighting prowess had given her the chance to fight for the right to wear a Cloth, without the ability to burn her Cosmo, how could she ever be considered a true Saint? How would a Cloth accept her as its user? She couldn’t blame her Master for being disappointed and frustrated. After all, _she_ was disappointed and frustrated with herself. If her Master took her life, she’d be merely fulfilling her duty to the Sanctuary and, more importantly, to Goddess Athena, who reigned the Sanctuary from her Private Chambers. It was _her_ blame to bear.

Her jaw dropped in astonishment, her eyes wide-open beneath the gray metal mask and a cold sweet falling down her spine, Seika witnessed as her Master rose a hand in the air just as purple sparks began forming between her fingers. Her fighter instinct pleaded her to react, to use of the techniques she had learn, those she used to defeat other Saint candidates as her, but her muscles were numb by the fear only her Master could cast upon her. Once again she felt as that orphan babygirl abandoned to her fate at the gates of a monastery in her natal Japan: defenseless and weak. Bravery, speed and intelligence may had let her defeat other candidates, but those skills meant nothing without true Cosmo burning from the heart. Not against a true Female Saint.

“Thunder Claw!”

Silvers Saints could move at twice the speed of sound, so the initial impact of her Master’s technique hit her body in complete silence, but filled with deadly intent. Her body didn’t seem to react at first, but a fraction of a second later Seika felt an electric torrent piercing through her body from the impact zone, flowing through her veins and muscles as if it was the deadly poison of a serpent. Her Master had hit her before, but in middle of her agony Seika comprehended that only that time she had been attacked seriously. The pain she felt was so deep she could hardly think and it was just thanks to her training that she could understand what was happening inside of her body: every atom that made her what she was had started to disintegrate one after the other, as if in an unstoppable chain reaction. Her death wouldn’t be painless, but it would be quick. And for some reason, Seika found comfort in that; she could make _peace_ with that. That was the price for not living up to her Master’s hopes. Ophiuchus Shaina, who had instructed her during the last six years, was known as one of the stronger Silver Saints in the Sanctuary, whose power could make even the more brave warrior tremble in fear, but whose student lacked even a pinch of her strength, a fact that was undoubtedly humiliated a Saint as proud as her. Seika was aware of that. If with her death she could release her Master from the shame her failure brought upon her, then losing her life may be worth the pain she was suffering…

_Seika!_

Suddenly, an unknown voice yelled from the deepest place of her heart and Seika, drunk in pain as she was, felt as she was waking up in the inside of some strange dream. Before her eyes she saw the same night sky where the silhouette her Master was just a moment ago. Every star, every planet and every galaxy shone before her with a beauty she had never paid any attention before. It was certainly a strange feeling. It was as if the very flow of time had stopped around her. Was this how death felt like? A chemical reaction from the brain before life abandoned completely? Whichever the answer, just for an instant Seika though she could enjoy a moment of contemplation before leaving this mortal world forever. She realized she felt neither pain nor fear. Was she already dead? With her eyes fixed upon the beautiful nightly vault high above her, and with the quiet gaze of the everlasting universe fixed down towards her, she suddenly felt as if her body flowed beyond her physical limits, as if she —somehow— had become one with everything that existed, and that everything felt more tangible than ever before she was destroyed…

_Seika, be strong!_

A voice from her deepest self. For a moment she thought it could be her Master’s —always so wise and impatient— reaching her as a reminder of a lesson learn a long time in the past:

“The body of a Saint is no different than that of any other person”, she taught her then. “Saints can perform miracles because they know how to use the universe that exists inside their bodies: that’s Cosmo!”

And Seika, the failed student on the verge of death, who so many times had tried and failed to reach that inner universe inside of her body, could finally feel it…

As the stars kept shining in front of her eyes, all their beauty noticeable even beyond the cold metal of her Female Saint mask, Seika finally accepted she could renounce to herself. A sudden thunder roared through her ears and she understood that the sound produced by her Master’s technique had finally reached her before getting lost in the distance as an echoing memory, as if it had been heard by another person and not her. There, with the Gates of Hades full opened and with nothing hanging her to her mortal coil, Seika felt her body, her entrails and her own heart burning with a boiling heat that grew beyond the Infinite.

_You can do it! Allow that sensation to grow and expand!_

Her atoms were no longer being destroyed, but rejuvenated and re-gained the very same elements that formed the entire universe and Seika felt a vigor she couldn’t fully understand, but that possessed the same heat at the core of the stars…

_What you are feeling is the Cosmo energy that lives inside your heart, Seika!_

«This is Cosmo…?»

Her first Cosmo. In the verge of dying.

With pristine clarity, a comforting brightness surged from the nothingness and called her from a distant point in the universe. Seika followed its shadow with fast eyes and every other one of her senses. She felt so lightweight after getting unburdened from her physical body that she thought she could touch it if she reached out her hand, but she quickly realized that that wasn’t necessary, that that brightness and everything that surrounded her were one and the same; everything a part of the same undying universe.

_Seika, you need to focus! I only have this chance to reach you with my Cosmo!_

The voice came from both everywhere and no place at all. And even if at first she thought it was the voice of her Master, once the sound took shape in her heart she recognized it as a masculine voice she had never heard before. She searched for the source, but the vastness in front of her was so huge and complete she couldn’t see anything.

_Seika, you finally did it!_

This time the voice came from inside the brightness and when Seika moved her eyes to meet it she found herself watching at the thirteen stars of the Pegasus Constellation, her guardian constellation that now shone in for her with the same beauty of the mythological winged horse. She felt the call again and it seemed to come from the Constellation itself:

_Sister!_

The voice claimed for her and for a fraction of a second Seika felt she was human again.

«Sister?!»

_Focus on my voice!_

«What’s going on?!»

_Follow the trail of my Cosmo!_

Suddenly and with the same deepness that filled her, uneasiness sneaked into her heart. She couldn’t explain it, but it was certainly there. She searched around and found nothing but the stars. It was there that she felt her Constellation’s plead, but looking back again she discovered that the stars of Pegasus had disappeared and replacing them was the destroyed structure of the old temple she and her Master used to train —marble columns cracked and fallen, white slabs broken and dirty—, everything surrounded by a sea of orange flames that climbed high while burning the stone. She could feel the voracious heat over her own body, as if she had recovered her humanity and had found herself in the middle of that temple she had set foot so many times before, but that now felt a strange and hostile place. Then she heard the screams and the muddle bangs of the strikes. She looked everywhere —a complete human girl in the middle of the chaos—, but there was no one to be seen; she was alone there.

She walked around, her senses confused and the flames tasting her skin from every angle, as she perceived feeling and emotions up to that time she didn’t know existed, but that now overwhelmed her.

«What is this?!»

Her legs failed and she fell to her knees over the cold stone-floor, assuring herself that everything she was feeling —the emotions, the rage, the fear, the unstoppable thunder of the warriors’ screams and the beating of the far-away battle— were about to make her lose her mind. However, just as desperation was consuming her heart, she was surrounded by a Cosmo as overwhelming as the embrace of the mother she didn’t meet and as deep as the pond where wisdom is born. It seemed eager to appease her. She looked up and suddenly found herself kneeling before the Athena Colossus that stood close to the Goddess’ Chambers, the place which during her six years living in Greece she had only managed to see from afar. The Goddess watched back to her with her stony face, her right hand holding Goddess Niké in her headless-angel form and her left holding the Shield that protected Earth; a Golden Helmet crowning the wise, ancient and beautiful traits under its shadow.

“Seika!”

She heard the shout not with her Cosmo, but with her own hears and quickly understood it came from a place nearby. She turned around on her feet, feeling for the first time that that voice had something disturbingly familiar on it, as if she had heard it before sometime somewhere, maybe in the remote past; maybe in another life.

When she looked up again she found herself the privileged witness of an ongoing battle at the Goddess’ feet. Two men wearing two Cloths were fighting to the death in front of her eyes and their clashes released such powerful energy Seika was sure they couldn’t be human. They ought to be Gods! Just at that moment, the Cosmo inside of her started burning up again with renewed strength before exploding in a bluish radiance that expanded unrelentingly. But the intensity of the Cosmo coming from the combatants consumed hers as if it was nothing. Theirs was so magnificent, so deep that maybe not even her Master’s Cosmo could compare. Maybe the only being in the Sanctuary capable of reaching their highs was Athena herself.

“Sister, I don’t have much time! Please, listen to me!”

The yelling voice came from one of the warriors. Seika recognized him as a young man wearing a damaged Cloth from whose body emanated a vigorous golden aura.

“Who…?”

She wanted to ask for his name, to understand why she felt she knew him, but the words got stuck in her throat, unable to come out. She couldn’t help but watch him in silence and admire his fierceness, because the young man kept fighting even if he was clearly losing the battle. His Cloth could still be recognized has possessing some beauty, but its skin of light-blue shades that resembled the morning sky and its golden ornamentations that shone like a rebel sun were decaying because of the suffered damage. A piece of the chest was gone, same with one shoulder. The waist and legs were cracked and shred. And even if the Cloth’s wings that projected from the warrior’s back tried to fly, they were so damaged that they lacked the energy and seemed to be giving up, even if the man wearing them wasn’t yielding yet.

Seika didn’t know who that young warrior was, but her heart was filled with desperation to helping him.

“The Earth has fallen to the Gods!”

Seika just couldn’t move. The only thing she could do was to listen while trying to understand what the man was saying, but it was difficult, as she had lost the control of her thoughts. However, she knew she was scared. The other warrior scared her. She could recognize in that warrior’s shape a supernatural power: dressed in a portentous Cloth of wavering colors, with ruthless metal wings sprouting from its back as if that warrior was an evil angel sent to punish mankind; undoubtedly a terrifying being. And his brother —because her heart suddenly recognized the young warrior was her missing brother— was fighting that being on his own!

“I used the last of my Cosmo to sync with yours, but I can feel the connection fading! Listen to me well, Seika!”

Seiya raised his face to the sky and his dying Cloth seemed to yell a groan of pain. Seika felt as if that lament from the Pegasus Cloth —because in her heart she had also recognized it— had hammered into her soul as a mournful weep. There, watching his brother as he burned up all of his remaining Cosmo into a single spot in his fist, she understood that he, just as she had done a moment ago, was getting ready to die. He’d sacrifice everything he had in a final strike, in a last attempt to seize victory. The intensity of the golden aura he irradiated grew incommensurately, expanding in such a way that it looked not only about to devour his rival, but herself and the entire universe!

“Sister!”, Seiya shouted one last time. “Don’t trust the Sanctuary! Athena…!”

The exclamation reached her with the force of a meteor rain, making her shudder. The golden aura of the Saint spanned time and space, and the even stars and galaxies surrendered to his power. Everything was engulfed by a Cosmo as full of rebelliousness as of love for all the humanity; a Cosmo that would burn up beyond its limits to give the world a new chance.

“Wait! Seiya!”

She finally managed to cry out, just as his brother’s Cosmo started filling her with a feeling so surprising it almost took every ounce of hope from her: regret —a regret so deep Seika thought her own heart would melt away to the pain.

“Brother!”

She ran towards him desperately, trying to reach him before he was consumed inside of his own Cosmo, but she couldn’t get that far. Goddess Athena’s Colossus lost all consistency and broke with a deep, cracking roar that resembled that of an earthquake. Big blocks of marble and gold started falling around her, raising dust and expanding the fires.

“Don’t go! Seiya!”

_Sister! Athena_ _…!_

Once again, the voice talked directly to her Cosmo. But this time, the voice sounded mournful.

_Athena betrayed us! She gave Earth to the Gods!_

Seika’s own heart stopped and although she felt her head spinning, confused by the endless torrent of sensations that had started flowing through her body once again, his brother’s last plead etched into her memory:

_I beg you, protect the Earth! Trust Pegasus!_

Seiya’s Cosmo exploded in a golden nova and then it completely disappeared.

Seika found herself floating on that place where the limits were non-existent. Darkness and cold besieged her. However, little by little, as a door shying its opening, the overwhelming pain and the fear of death came back to her in full force. All sounds returned as Seika felt as the human she had always been. Her eyes again looking at the starry night above the Sanctuary as her body floated in the air, drawing an arch in the air after receiving her Master’s strike. Even though all her senses felt numbed and her eyes failed, she could clearly see how the metal mask flew off her face followed by a torrent of blood vomited from her mouth.

Time resumed its normal pace as Seika hit hard against the ground of the ancient temple in ruins where her Master had decided to finish everything. All she had seen had happened in just a moment and Seika’s confused mind couldn’t tell what had been real and what had been just the product of a dying brain. She thought that now life would leave her behind, but just as her eyes started to close, maybe for the last time, she spotted the light of the thirteen stars of Pegasus looking back at her. And just as she turned her head to throw up another stream of blood from her insides, Seika felt the stars’ warm covering her and asking for her faith. She had never felt as close to her guardian constellation as she felt then.


End file.
